Stop and Think

6/5/13    Arturo              about 40

A prevailing belief in American culture seems to be that if something cannot be scientifically proven, then somehow we are free to make up our own version of truth about it.  Today a man named Arturo responded to my question about life after death by stating “Well, no one can prove it one way or another, so I just think that if you really believe in something, then it will most likely happen that way.”  Arturo said he is Catholic but believes all religions worship the same God, so I asked “Some people believe in heaven and hell, some in reincarnation, some that we just cease to exist.  Now if one of these views is actually the truth, do you think what a person believes will change which one of these actually happens after we die?” I asked this to try to help Arturo understand that what is important is the truth, not our opinions or imagination about  it.  He had been using our lack of ability to scientifically prove the truth as an excuse to just ignore it.  But in Romans 1, Paul wrote that we have no excuse: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”  We have all the evidence we need for a reasonable faith in God; in the end all our excuses are just, well, excuses. With this in mind, Arturo and I went on to a longer conversation about the Gospel despite his initial doubts.  Simply getting a person to stop and reconsider the possibility of God’s existence and  the implications of God’s truth can really help them take it seriously.